ECW Campaign - Activation Again - Crude but OK

In my recent Battle of High Cark (previous post), I had another example of a medium-sized action which did not lay out nicely in the official play-across-the-table, left-centre-right sector format which best suits Commands & Colors. In fact, the battle did sort itself into across-the-table, but it might not have done.

Since it was also a solo game, there were a couple of reasons why I decided for this occasion to swerve my customised ECW set of C&C Command Cards for activation. I’ve done this on occasions in the past, usually replacing the cards with a semi-improvised dice system to fit the scenario. These systems have all worked tolerably well – my personal view on each of them is based on very short, Stone Age-man criteria.

(1) Does it restrict the number of activated units to about the right level (i.e. something comparable with what the C&C cards would give)?

(2) Is the extra overhead of labour and mental arithmetic acceptable, in view of the advantages offered (i.e. is it a pain in the butt)?

(3) Does it make sense (i.e. can it be explained in sensible, real-world terms, or is it just an obviously artificial game mechanism to limit each move)?

Dice manufacture in the Stone Age - lack of a numbering system was a major problem

Point (1) is simply that C&C provides the player with a hand of cards (usually the cards he doesn’t want), of which he may play one – typically, the sector cards allow activation of between 1 and 4 units, though some allow activation of a number of units equal to the number of cards in the player's hand. This gives an approximate idea of how much activation is appropriate for tested use with C&C’s movement and combat rules, and with the required (short) duration of each turn, to keep things ticking along.

Point (2) is obviously also about keeping the game moving, and a personal aversion I have to command radii (which, of course, are loved and embraced by a great many players whose views and opinions I respect). I have had unhappy flirtations with caches of Command Chips and similar – as soon as they become a nuisance, the Activation rules are abandoned, and I use tasteful application of Point (3) to justify this.

My latest improvisation came after reading some of Neil Thomas’ rules. It does not appear in any of Neil’s books as far as I know, but I find Mr Thomas invigorating for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he is not scared of doing something unorthodox in the interests of simplifying and speeding up the game – I frequently disagree with individual manifestations of this, but at heart he is definitely my kind of wargamer. I have a slight difficulty with the fact that he often has several different approaches for the same period, and I am never sure just how tested and proven these rules are, but once you challenge accepted thinking the gloves are off, and all sorts of new and sacrilegious ideas spring to mind.

All right, Foy – enough preamble, already – what did you do for the ECW battle?

Well, first off I applied my recently-developed “brigade order” rule. An “order” (activation counter) may be placed against a single unit, or against a Leader/General figure – and in my ECW games the Leaders go down to brigade level. Thus far it looks rather like C&C. The ordered Unit or Leader may then move, fight, whatever. However, if the order is given to a Leader, and if he is attached to a combat unit under his own command, then a contiguous group of units from this same brigade may be activated by this single order. Thus my armies have broken out in rashes of coloured counters, to identify the various brigades, and the need to keep them together to take advantage of this feature (an effect I term “daisychaining” when explaining it to bemused visitors) forces the army commander to keep his army organised. If a unit gets separated from its brigade, it requires a separate order – perhaps it will be moved back into contact with the brigade. In broken ground, or if a unit in the middle of the line breaks, or if (heaven forfend) the brigadier stops a bullet, the additional hassle of keeping that brigade under control is considerable.

A more senior Leader may take command of a brigade (only one at a time) if the brigadier is lost. All Leaders attached to units are, of course, at risk if the unit takes losses.

OK – that’s not really all that new – I’ve mentioned this before, and bits of it are sort of derived from CCA. The new bit was the Activation rule. The “phasing” player (don’t you hate that?) is about to take his turn, and he arms himself with a handful of my patent blue ACTIVE counters and a D6.

He is only going to get to place a limited number of Activation counters, so he had better prioritise, and he had better be selective. He gets the first one for nothing – place a counter against any unit or leader he wishes.

It gets harder as he goes along. For his second order/counter, he must throw a 2 or better on the D6. If he gets 2+, he places a second counter, and then he must get 3+ to place a third. And so on – he may stop whenever he wishes, and if he doesn’t make the next number (or successfully places a 6^th counter) then he must stop. Yes it is crude – I am proud of how crude it is – but it works, on average it gives something like the number of Activation orders you might expect from C&C, but you don’t know how many until you find out the hard way. Ideal for a solo player - I found it easy, convenient and still with a good few stings in the tail. On four, possibly five occasions in the Battle of High Cark I decided to place an order against one of the C-in-Cs, to move him nearer to where he was needed (just in case). As soon as the C-in-C was identified, without fail, the D6 rolled a “1” and the C-in-C remained where he was. It became a bit of a joke – a sad, solo joke, but there you go.

For a bigger battle, I guess I might use a D8, or a D10, but the D6 might do for even very big actions if the brigade orders feature were available. Anyway, there’s the outline. I liked it the other day – it passed all my Stone Age tests. You can reject it out of hand, or improve on it, or try it out, or tell me that it actually appeared in an SPI game in 1978, but do – at least – think about it. Out of the mouths of fools and single-cell organisms cometh wisdom – when you are contemplating the unthinkably crude, you may come up with a few new wacky ideas of your own.

And, if you haven’t already, have a look at Neil Thomas – I read and shrugged at his Napoleonic book, and did pretty much the same with his One-Hour wargames book, but – by Gum – my mind was racing afterwards. Homeopathy for wargamers?    

ECW Campaign - Battle of High Cark, 4th April 1644

Sir Rowland Barkhill's Parliamentarian horse, attached to the Covenanter army,
take station on the right flank, at Mallinson's Farm

During Week 5 of the campaign, the Parliamentarian commander, Sir Henry Figge-Newton, ordered the Scottish troops under General Geddes to advance northwards from Pacefield, drive between the two Royalist forces (who were at Erneford and Lowther) and capture the ferry crossing over the River Arith at Cark, moving his men over to the north side of the river. Geddes, who had very few cavalry, was reinforced by the addition of most of a brigade of horse under the command of Sir Rowland Barkhill, whose troopers had been only lightly engaged at Midlawton.

Because of a quirk of the campaign system, this map has the southern
edge at the top, so the Scottish troops crossed the river and advanced down the page

Geddes carried this out quickly and efficiently, but found that there was no-one at the ferry and that the boats had been removed. His engineers built a temporary bridge and the soldiers crossed, but there was some confusion over what to do next. Geddes decided to advance to the east, but a Northumbrian Royalist force under Sir John Darracott was approaching behind him, having been warned that the Parliament men had crossed the river. Geddes’ scouts soon spotted the Royalists behind them, and the Scots turned about to meet them in the vicinity of Cark Hall – what was originally intended to be a movement to isolate the fortress of Erneford had turned into an encounter-type battle, within a mile or so of the ferry itself.

Darracott had brought along a medium cannon (a saker) from the fortress, but realised that he was outnumbered, and he arranged a defensive line, with his cavalry on his left. Geddes attacked all along his line, though it took a while to get his troops organised properly – he had the brigade of Colonel St Clair on his right, attacking a rocky hill, and the Earl of Dunbar attacking a more open position on his left, with Colonel Herdman’s brigade supporting that of the Earl.

The Royalist left held their position stoutly, and St Clair’s attack was repulsed, but things went less well on their right. Colonel Brogan was wounded fairly early in the action, and the resultant difficulty in co-ordinating the operations of his brigade was not helped by Sir John Darracott being cut off from the main action – he was forced to take personal evasive action to escape The Parliamentary cavalry, and he took little further part in the battle.  Brogan’s brigade were rolled up from their right, and, after a brief, stubborn defence of the rocky hill, Colonel Frayne (surprised to find himself now in effective command) ordered a withdrawal back to Erneford. The Royalists were harried by Barkhill’s horse during the retreat, and lost a good number of prisoners.

Col Edward Frayne (b.1608), of Beescombe Park,
near Ashington - commander by default

Royalist Force – General Sir John Darracott  - 4700 foot, 800 horse, 1 gun

Brigade of Col Edward Frayne

Regts of Foot of De la Roche, Wooding & Frayne

Brigade of Col Philip Brogan

Regts of Foot of Charlton, Fintry, Corfield & Brogan

Brigade of Col Henry Moorhouse

Regts of Horse of Moorhouse & Noden

1 medium artillery piece

Estimated losses approx 2000 foot, 600 horse; the solitary cannon was lost and Colonel Brogan was wounded, though he should recover fairly quickly.

General Geddes waves his hat in victory - mind you, he would wave it in defeat
too. Hat waving is what he does best.

Parliament Force – General Wm Geddes – 6000 foot, 1200 horse

Brigade of Col John St Clair

Regts of Foot of St Clair, Laird & Petrie

Brigade of Col Wm Herdman

Regts of Foot of Herdman, Yester & Sweeting

Brigade of the Earl of Dunbar

Regts of Foot of Snodgrass, McKinnon & Dunbar

Brigade of Sir Rowland Barkhill

Regts of Horse of South, Dundonald & Pitlochrie

Losses approx 1400 foot, 100 horse.

[Once again, the losses of both sides are inflated by a large proportion of missing troops, some of whom are expected to return to the colours.]

Detailed army returns for Week 5 will appear in a week or so.

General view at commencement, from behind the Royalist left

Sir Henry Moorhouse, with the Royalist horse, who had a difficult day

Geddes' Covenanters set off on their general advance, the horse nearest the camera,
then the brigades of St Clair, Herdman and the Earl of Dunbar

The Earl of Dunbar's brigade advance - not an elegant touch of ordre mixte, surely?

Col Frayne gets the Royalist left organised on the hill...

...and here you can see the attack coming, though it took a while to get into shape

Flat-pack engineering - the Scots' admirable temporary bridge; Pitlochrie Horse
and Cark Hall in the background

From behind the Parliamentary attack - Herdman (orange counters) is the reserve

Borrowed from the fortress at Erneford - a saker - complete waste of time -
never hit anything all afternoon, and was left behind in the retreat

Naturally there was a cavalry melée - Royalists nearer the camera

Brogan advances rather untidily to meet the Earl of Dunbar's men

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary horse roll some very useful dice

Frayne's brigade did an excellent job defending the hill on the Royalist left

While Brogan's men (without their wounded commander) did less well at the other end

This is just about the end of the day - Frayne withdrew what he could, but the
loss of the artillery battery provided the deciding Victory Point, and it was time to go

Frayne was left alone, defending his hill, surrounded by the enemy

Same view, different angle

Hooptedoodle #163 - The Grand Prix at Aintree

I’ve been very busy with the dreaded Real Life for a couple of weeks, a situation which is likely to persist for a little while longer, so I have done no painting and there has been no progress with the ECW campaign. None of this is a problem – it was all expected and planned, and the sector of Real Life I have been busy with is something I am very enthusiastic about anyway. There is a wargames-related development shaping up in the form of some forthcoming figures I have commissioned, but I’m not allowed to say anything about that yet.

Things should get back on track in February in the Campaigning and Blogging Dept, but, to avoid the Prometheus saga shrivelling up altogether, I decided to publish a rather long nostalgia post which I drafted up some weeks ago for my own amusement. Here goes.

The Grand Prix at Aintree

The Grand National - one of the smallest fences

A little while ago I was sorting through some folders of my photographs, and I found some pictures that I took about 10 years ago, on a visit to Aintree racecourse.

As I have mentioned before, I was born and raised in Liverpool, a large and workmanlike industrial city and port in the north-west of England. To its children, and to people who have grown to love the place, it possesses a certain vigour, not to say charm, but I grew up when it was still extensively wrecked from the air raids of WW2, when there was not enough money to get on with rebuilding it properly and things were, to use a fashionable term, austere.

There was not a lot of organised fun about life in Liverpool at that time – I think we had a couple of active theatres, we had a very famous orchestra which was resident at the rebuilt Philharmonic Hall, we had two so-so football teams whose glories were mostly in the past, and there were a number of other attractions, but nothing really to write home about (assuming that home was somewhere else). The relative boom time of the 1960s was still mostly in the future.

What we did have, though, was the Grand National, at Aintree. For the benefit of non-British readers, the Grand National is a very old, very famous horse race, run over very large, permanent fences, of the type which in Britain is known as a steeplechase. This was a mighty event, run every year, which attracted huge crowds and lots of money to our humble corner of the Provinces. The racecourse and the event, at Aintree, on the northern edge of the city, were owned by the very wealthy Topham family – I think the chargehand of the day was Mrs Mirabel Topham, an impressively large and strong minded lady. Though her horse race brought a great deal of welcome money to the city, she seems to have spent a lot of time arguing with the City Council. One of the areas of contention was Melling Road.

Mrs Topham

Melling Road, you see, was a public thoroughfare which ran right through the middle of the racecourse area, and the track crossed it at two points, which required the road itself to be closed whenever the track was in use and turf and straw to be temporarily laid on it to provide a continuous surface for the horses.

Modern aerial view, North at the top. You can see Melling Road splitting the
area into two, and that the links joining the two portions of the road circuit have gone

Sometime around 1953, someone in the Topham empire had the brainwave of constructing a race track for motor cars alongside the steeplechase course. It was a flat and rather uninspiring circuit compared with the great European tracks, to be sure, but, since racing on public roads – even closed public roads – was illegal in the UK, a track on private land provided a much-needed venue, it was at least as interesting as the perimeter tracks of retired WW2 airfields (which provided most of the British venues at that time, for a sport that was growing rapidly in popularity) and – spectacularly – it could share the very substantial grandstands and spectator amenities built for the Grand National, which was a very attractive proposition indeed. At the time, it was announced as “the Goodwood of the North”, which seems odd now, but the idea of a combined horse and car racing facility on private land (as had been built by the Duke of Richmond, near Chichester, in Sussex) was very appealing. Naturally, race reports and films of the day refer sniffily to the unattractive nature of Liverpool itself, and the “throat catching stink” of the British Enka works next door. Monte Carlo it certainly was not.

Start of the 1962 Aintree 200 (by this time the race was 200 Km, not miles),
showing the impressive grandstands

Just to prove they weren't really monochrome cars, here's Bonnier, the Swedish
driver, in a factory-entered Porsche at the 1960 "200" race - his car was, erm, silver...

The Aintree circuit had a 3-mile “Grand Prix” version, which utilised the big Grand National facilities and required closure of the Melling Road, as discussed. The Council may just about have been prepared to close it for a big honey-pot like the country’s biggest horse race, but motor racing was a different proposition altogether, and a sniping war between the city’s elected and the Tophams was a feature of the period. There was also a smaller, “club” circuit which did not need the road to be closed, but which therefore did not use the main pit building or the big grandstands. It did, however, allow crowds to stand on the romantically named Railway Embankment, from which you could see almost all of the track (if you had remarkable eyesight).

The first motor race meeting was long before my time, and the cars ran anti-clockwise – I think this was simply because it was the same direction as the horses. Afterwards, the racing was always clockwise, which is more normal for cars (for some reason). Mrs Topham was thinking big right from the outset – she obviously had designs on hosting the world championship British Grand Prix at Aintree, and – location apart – the venue had some very obvious attractions. She got her way very quickly – in 1955 the British GP was held there, in very hot weather in July, and it was a huge success. There was mixed feeling about the German Mercedes team finishing 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th in the big race, only 14 years after the Luftwaffe had been busily bombing the port of Liverpool into ruins, but the German team were smart enough to arrange for young Stirling Moss to win the race, ahead of his great team-mate, Juan Fangio, so everyone was very happy.

Moss wins the 1955 GP, from Fangio

And again in 1957, this time for the Vanwall team

Of course, there was more politics behind the scenes. The organising body of the British GP at Aintree was the Royal Automobile Club, and they made it a huge spectacle, rather upstaging the previous efforts at Silverstone, a converted airfield in Northamptonshire, where the organising body was the British Racing Drivers Club (a lot more blazers and moustaches at Silverstone, then). The rivalry produced a short-lived compromise whereby the respective organisers and venues took turn about to host the British GP. The Aintree “200” (200 miles) race was an international event held each year before the start of the world championship season began in earnest, and this quickly became established as a major event on the calendar each Spring. Aintree had its turn of staging the Grand Prix itself in 1955 (when Moss won his first world championship race, as mentioned), in 1957 (when Moss went one better and won in the Vanwall, thus becoming the first British winner of a Grande Epreuve in a British car since Henry Segrave’s exploits with the Sunbeam in the 1920s), in 1959 (when Brabham won in a Cooper-Climax – a rear-engined car – on his way to becoming world champion that year), in 1961 (when I was there, as I shall describe shortly) and – out of sequence and for the last time – in 1962 (when Jimmy Clark won it in a Lotus). Thereafter the British GP was triumphantly taken back to its “rightful” home and the blazers at Silverstone, where it has been held – apart from a few years at Brands Hatch, in Kent – ever since.

I was taken to the “200” meeting in 1959 by my “Uncle” Duggie, a family friend. It was a very long day out, and I was very young, so I think that, since I have no recollection of seeing Jean Behra, the French driver, win in a works Ferrari, we may have left before the end of the main event.

After that I went to the “200” race each year, on my own or – sometimes – with a school chum. The fact that nobody ever went with me a second time suggests that already, at that age, my obsessive brand of enthusiasm was a difficult thing to be subjected to for a complete day out! It was a real adventure. I would set off from home at around 7am on the Saturday morning, wrapped in my warmest clothing, with an old gas-mask satchel containing a day’s supply of sardine sandwiches and Penguin biscuits. The number 61 bus would take about an hour to get me up to Walton, in the north end of the city, and then the best bet was just to walk to Aintree and the circuit. I would get there around 9:30 to 10, I guess, and the public address system would be playing the BBC’s Saturday morning programmes – including the legendary “Uncle Mac” and his children’s musical request show. If I ever hear any of those novelty tunes from that time I can still see Aintree racecourse on a shivery, grey morning, with the odd sports car warming up on the track and the grandstands slowly filling up as the wealthier ticket-holders arrived.

Typically, a day’s racing would have events for Formula Junior (single seaters with production engines of about 1 litre – this was regarded as a great training ground for the future GP stars), sports cars, saloon cars and GT (Grand Touring) cars as well as the big Formula 1 event, so it was a long, long day. I used to get into the (cheap) public enclosure, and go to the top of the Railway Embankment, where I would sit on my plastic raincoat, armed with my plastic binoculars. You were a long way from the cars, but you could see a lot of the track, and the fastest part ran past the embankment. You could get closer to the action by going to the bottom of the bank, of course, but the cars were still the other side of the Grand National track, and the big jumps on the horse track meant that you only got a glimpse of the cars as they whizzed between two adjacent jumps. Up at the top was best – it was windy, and it was uncomfortable, but it was the place to go. Sadly, I did not have a camera, and I lost my treasured souvenir programmes years ago – they probably fell to pieces, in fact.

I only once attended the Grand Prix – in 1961. That was a very exciting season. The international body which ran the F1 championship had changed the rules so that the engines were reduced to 1.5 litres. The British had just started to become successful under the previous rules, and so did what the British always tend to do – they wasted the two years notice period protesting about the rule changes. The Italian team, Ferrari, of course, just got on with developing new cars for the new rules, so that by the time the 1961 season got under way the British teams were all using bought-in 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engines, developing around 145 bhp, while the Ferraris had nice new V6-cylinder jobs developing about 185 bhp, and increasing to around 200 bhp later in the season. The season should have been a walkover for Ferrari, but they had a team of drivers which was probably their weakest for some years (good enough drivers, but no real stars – they had two Americans, Phil Hill and Ritchie Ginther, and a German nobleman, Count Wolfgang Berghe von Trips), and also Stirling Moss produced some real virtuoso performances in his underpowered Lotus at Monte Carlo and at the German Nurburgring, and he really punched well above his weight. For a while, it looked as though he might be able to offer a heroic challenge for the championship title.

Lord, didn't it rain... here is the start in 1961, with the shark-nosed Ferraris to the fore

When I went to the British GP at Aintree in July, Von Trips, Phil Hill and Moss had already each won one race, and things were looking set for a real thriller of a season. Race day was awful – torrential rain of monsoon proportions was a feature of the main race. I was absolutely soaked through. In the early stages of the race, Moss took advantage of his ability in the tricky conditions and harrassed the more powerful Ferraris, but eventually he was forced to retire, and Von Trips, Hill and Ginther finished in line astern in the first three places, well ahead of the rather breathless opposition. After his retirement, Moss took over  the new, experimental, 4-wheel drive Ferguson car which had also been entered by his team, and circulated very quickly in the wet conditions. Of course, he was not challenging for the race lead, but I believe that I can thus claim that, in the Ferguson on that day, I got a glimpse of the last front-engined car ever to run in a Grand Prix.

Von Trips led for most of the race

Moss chased the Ferraris for a while...

...and when the rain was at its heaviest he got up to second place, but his car didn't last

So he had a shot in the experimental 4WD Ferguson, last front-engined GP racer
ever. In the background is the Railway Embankment, with the weather
gradually improving - I was somewhere near the top middle, soaking wet

So Moss didn’t win, and his world championship hopes slid further. With the fickleness of youth, I decided that if my British hero could not win then I would also support the Ferraris, the handsome young German nobleman seemed a suitable back-up hero, and the most likely favourite for the championship, so I transferred at least part of my allegiance to Von Trips.

Von Trips looks subdued at the end of the race. Perhaps he was as
cold and wet as I was. He was now the strong favourite for the
World Championship, but he was dead within six weeks

A few weeks later, Moss won brilliantly in the German GP, but the next race was at the very fast Monza circuit, for the Italian race, and no-one was expected to get close to the Ferraris. My new hero, Von Trips, was killed very publicly and in very gladiatorial fashion when his car crashed on the second lap at Monza and he was thrown out onto the track. Phil Hill won the race and claimed a joyless championship for Ferrari. I was appalled by the accident, but recovered sufficiently to take an interest in the start of the 1962 season, for which the British teams had new engines and were expected to be competitive. For reasons which have never been explained, Moss crashed in the Easter Monday race at Goodwood, before the championship season commenced, and was seriously injured. His life was in the balance for a while, but he recovered, though he never raced at the top level again.

That did it – I gave up on motor racing. It was 1980 before I started following F1 racing seriously again, and it was 1985 before I attended an international event again. As is the nature of things, those boyhood heroes were bigger and brighter, their cars more spectacular, their exploits more hair-raising, though in reality the racing of the early 1960s was a brave but feeble effort compared to the modern sport.

When I was in the 6^th Form at grammar school, I once “sagged off” during a free study morning, and, just for old times’ sake, took the old 61 bus up to Walton, trekked up to Aintree, climbed through the gates at Melling Road and walked around the old Grand Prix circuit in the rain – I think I gave up before I got back to the grandstands, but I waved to the empty Railway Embankment as I passed.

Here are a couple of the nostalgia visit pics from 2004 which kicked off this
reminiscence - here are three British Grand Prix cars from the 1950s, from
left to right, the green cars are a 1952 HWM, a 1953 Cooper-Bristol and a
1955 B-Type Connaught - all before my time!

A much more competitive car - this is a Maserati 250F - quite a low, late one
- maybe 1957

The Club Circuit still exists – there are races there, but none of them involves the full track, and they are all minor events. In 2004 I went down there with a friend to visit a special open day which featured guest appearances by Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks and Roy Salvadori – British stars from Aintree’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a bus trip around the track, which was fun, and there were a lot of old cars on display. We also signed a massive petition objecting to a planned redevelopment which would permanently destroy what was left of the old Grand Prix circuit – housing and new grandstands near the old Melling Crossing. In fact the fund-raiser and the petition gave the fleeting appearance of being a faint scam, since it seems that the planning permission for the development had already been signed off, and the changes were not up for negotiation. I imagine the Topham family had lost interest in international motor racing long before this date also.

The circuit is mostly still there – the TV camera car drives along it to film the horse racing at Aintree – but the old Melling Road now has to be closed only for the horses, which is traditional and is probably as it should be. The upstart RAC British Grand Prix in the North is long gone, as is the 12-year-old with the sardine sandwiches, but it is still a little sad to think that the asphalt track where Fangio and Co raced is just a service road now.